Sometime, it becomes necessary to delete an encounter, for example, the wrong patient’s appointment was checked-in and an encounter was created in error.
Activity that may have already occurred on the encounter may include the following:
- The encounter was created from the Appointment Book using the Checkin/Create Encounter process.
- The status of the appointment changed from Expected to Kept when the encounter was created.
- The encounter was automatically linked to the appointment.
- Payers were attached to the encounter.
- Charges were entered on the encounter.
- Diagnosis codes from the charges were copied to the Patient Chart, Encounters tab.
- Transactions were entered on the encounter.
- The encounter was billed and a claim was created.
To reverse the check-in of an appointment and delete the associated encounter, the activity that has already taken place on the encounter must be removed. This is typically done in the reverse order of how the activity occurred.
To delete an encounter, you must do the following:
- Remove claims from the encounter.
- Remove unposted transactions from the encounter.
- Remove charges from the encounter.
- Remove encounter-level diagnoses from the encounter.
- Remove payers from the encounter.
- Remove the encounter from the appointment.
- Reset the appointment status from Kept to Expected.
- Delete the encounter.
